When Sir John was little more than a boy, Johnson, half in earnest, proposed him as a fitting mate for the author of “Evelina,” so Mrs Thrale states; and, indeed, Miss Burney herself records a conversation in 1778 between that lady and the doctor. The inadvisability of the union, however, soon became apparent, and when Sir John, a little later, asked Johnson if he would advise him to marry, “I would advise no man to marry, sir,” replied the great man, “who is not likely to propagate understanding”; but the baronet, who doubtless thought this was an excellent joke, and as such intended, crowned his follies by espousing a woman of more than doubtful character. When Sir John met his future wife, she was a servant at a house of ill-fame in Broad Street, St Giles, and, rightly or wrongly, was credited with having been the mistress of Jack Rann, the highwayman, better known as “Sixteen-string Jack,” who deservedly ended his career on the gallows in 1774. Marriage did not apparently mend her manners or her morals, for, according to Huish—who, it must, however, be admitted, was an arrant scandalmonger—she was for some time the mistress of the Duke of York, and also acted as procuress for the Prince of Wales; while her command of bad language was so remarkable that the Prince used to say of any foul-mouthed man: “He speaks like Letty Lade.”
Like her husband, Lady Lade was a fine whip, and many stories are told of her prowess as a driver of a four-in-hand.
“More than one steed Letitia’s empire feels,
Who sits triumphant o’er the flying wheels;
And, as she guides them through th’ admiring throng,
With what an air she smacks the silken thong.
Graceful as John, she moderates the reins;
And whistles sweet her diuretic strains;
Sesostris-like, such charioteers as these